Tag: the Keepsies

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SCREENS Cover

The new Forest Fire record Screens is coming out September 10th on Fat Cat and is available now to pre-order. I recorded, mixed and co-produced the record with the band last fall, at Tree Time (Fat Cat’s studio upstate), Doctor Wu’s, and my home studio.  It was honestly one of my favorite record-making experiences of my career, and is some of the best sounding work I’ve ever done… no joke.  The first song “Waiting in the Night” and a brief interview is on MTV Hive for you to enjoy.

“She (Was My Baby)”, the second single from the Keepsies, is out now.  The Keepsies are Vince McClelland, Austin Brown (from Parquet Courts), and Jason Kelly (from Fergus & Geronimo).  I recorded some overdubs and mixed these songs last year, so I’m super excited that they’ve hit the web for everyone to enjoy!  Hopefully the third one will come out a bit faster…..


And the entire series of Catherine is now online!  The series was created by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleicher-Camp for the JASH Network (Sarah Silverman, Tim and Eric, Michael Cera, and Reggie Watts’ Youtube channel).  If you haven’t yet ventured down this mind-numbing wormhole of a show, here’s your perfect chance!

I just got back from Chicago, where I mixed the Blue stage at Pitchfork Music Festival.  It’s always nice going back and working with my friends and associates from when I lived out there, and it was extra special to have so many friends playing on my stage… Frankie Rose and her band, Parquet Courts, Chairlift… all slayed.  I rode back in the van with Parquet Courts, which was great to catch up with the gang, and got us all excited to get back into the studio in September to finish the album!

If you wanna talk sound, please write at jonathan.schenke[at]gmail.com.  Thanks for checking out my site!

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The Apocalypse is happening at South By Southwest!  After premiering at this year’s Sundance festival, the short by Andrew Zuchero (which I sound designed and mixed) will be part of the Midnight Shorts program.  I’ve never been to the film festival part of SXSW, and am really looking forward to being a part of it!  There’s another project (still under wraps) that I mixed debuting at SXSW, and I’m really excited to see 12 O’Clock Boys, which is currently doing a fundraising campaign to finish post production…. help out if you can!

I’m sticking around for the music festival to hang with my boys Parquet Courts, who are playing a buttload of shows this year.  The love for Light Up Gold keeps flowing,  with prominent voices like Rolling Stone, NPR, The Guardian, Village Voice, and Sound Opinion’s Jim DeRegotis showing their enthusiasm.  Can’t wait to do some more recording with them soon.

Wild Leaves EP Cover

Wild Leaves are releasing a 12″ EP on March 26th called Wind & Rain.  We recorded this to a Tascam 388 upstate in a quonset hut leading up to Hurricane Sandy, which was a totally fun and bizarre experience.  They’ve debuted the title track, which has already got some nice press… check out this review and interview.  The artwork is hand-drawn and assembled, and it sounds like it will be one of those lovingly-crafted packages that will be a treat to pull out and listen to.

I recently mastered an EP for Chicago buddies Thin Hymns recently called Black Water.  It’s for a cassette/download release coming out soon… really cool stuff!

Recording Forest Fire

The new Forest Fire record – tentatively titled Monorail – is currently being mastered by Alan Douches at West West Side Mastering.  Listening through this album again got me soooooo so excited – I can’t wait for everyone to hear this one.  It will be released later this year on Fat Cat, and check out these photos of us recording in the meantime.

Sweet Talk Cover

The new Sweet Talk record Pickup Lines got some serious love from one of my all-time record store and Chicago homies, Permanent Records: “YES!!! REAL IN YOUR FACE ROCK N ROLL GOODNESS, we couldn’t agree more.  Fans of the Bad Sports / Mind Spiders / OBN IIIs / ViDEO tangle of Austin garage / punk bands will no doubt need to grab Sweet Talk’s Pickup Lines.  But those who, like us, have an affinity / addiction to loud catchy guitar rock along the lines of Dinosaur Jr, Redd Kross, Pavement and the Makers definitely won’t need to get sweet talked into grabbing Pickup Lines.  This is a rowdy rock n roll time just like those other great Lone Star state heroes, Moving Sidewalks, ZZ Top and 13th Floor Elevators.  So crank up the volume and get ready to have a blast.  We nabbed a stack of the super limited white vinyl version (only 100 pressed), so don’t sleep on it.  SWEETLY RECOMMENDED.”  Hell yeah!

Dumb Fun Cover

And I totally spaced on posting this earlier, but The Keepsies got a 7″ pressing of the Dumb Fun single on Chrome Waves Records and a review from Impose Magazine.  The Keepsies are Austin from Parquet Courts, Jason from Fergus & Geronimo, and Vince of His Own Bad Self… I love these songs, and there are a bunch more where they came from.  Pick up a copy of one here while you can!

I’ve got a bunch of cool stuff on the horizons, and I’ve added a bunch of links to different projects throughout this site, so please feel free to check things out.  Write me at jonathan.schenke [at] gmail.com if you’d like to chat, and THANKS FOR READING!

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Light Up Gold, the new album by Brooklyn’s Parquet Courts, is out now on gold-colored vinyl and digital download from Dull Tools.  We tracked this on a Tascam 388 in the late-winter, and I mixed and mastered it at my personal studio…. we are all really proud of how it turned out – solid performances of cool songs, great tones and good vibes, and the sequencing and design & packaging (by the band’s A. Savage) really seal the deal.

It’s been getting lots of blog love too… always nice when things work out like that.  Brooklyn Vegan gave a great review of their record release show a few weeks back at Death By Audio, which was a total blast.  Noisey/Vice debuted “Stoned and Starving”, one of my favorite jams from the record, with a nice tangental rumination by bassist Sean Yeaton about drinking milk.  Raven Sings the Blues and The Needle Drop both raved about “Borrowed Time”, with the Needle Drop giving a positive (if somewhat rambling) review of the LP.  The Deli NYC gave Light Up Gold “two thumbs up” and Internet punk mecca Terminal Boredom had lots of love for the album, even going so far as to say “The recording by Jonathan Schenke is crystal-clear, and it suits the band perfectly.”  Aw shucks!!

If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, go to their bandcamp page now, or just man up and buy an LP before they run out of the gold ones!

Austin Brown, one of the guitarists from Parquet Courts, has a new band called the Keepsies, who just released their first digital single Dumb Fun.  It’s some of the best straight-up pop/rock I’ve heard in a loooong time, inspired by classic 60’s and 70’s sounds and nailing it wholeheartedly.  The title track will totally get you going, and you’ll swoon by the end of the closer “Saturday”.

The band is a bunch of fellow Texan ex-pats: Austin, Vince McClelland and Jason Kelly (from Fergus & Geronimo and Wax Museums).  Jason recorded these songs (and others) on Austin’s Tascam 388 (same one as the Parquet Courts record, fyi), with Austin and I recording a bunch of overdubs.  I then mixed it at my place, with a final pass through at Doctor Wu’s.  It’s amazing what you can do sometimes with only 8 tracks…

The Keepsies have two more singles on deck for later this year, and hopefully some live performances sooner rather than later!  Expect to be hearing a lot more about these guys….

… and as always, thanks for stopping by and checking out my shit.  Please reach out if you wanna chat: jonathan.schenke[at]gmail.com

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The first recording I’ve done at the new Doctor Wu’s Studio is now online.  It’s an EP by Bob Jones & the Golden Tones called Remainderman, and you can stream it in its entirety online.  Bob had all these beats and grooves and ideas floating around, so we holed up in the studio for a few days to record and arrange and see what took.  The result is a suite of synth ambience, krauty grooves, and driving post-punk.  I’m really proud of how it came together, both sonically (the gear at Doctor Wu’s is truly gorgeous sounding) and compositionally.  Check it out!

The companion CD for Reggie Watts’ A “Live” in Central Park also recently dropped, and received this excellent review from Consequence of Sound.  I had the good fortune to step in and mix it after the Comedy Central special, and I’m glad that other people enjoyed it as much as me!

“The album is a perfect snapshot of an artist at the top of his game. Watts may be a new generation’s Andy Kaufman and Miles Davis rolled into one hyper creative genius; as a result, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more entertaining artist out there.”

Woo!  Read the whole thing here: http://consequenceofsound.net/2012/05/album-review-reggie-watts-a-live-at-central-park/

I just wrapped up mastering the final album by Chicago’s sludge-metal heros Cacaw for Permanent Records.  Bat Skin Robes was recorded last year by Cooper Crain (of Cave and Bitchin Bajas) and is the by far my favorite of their albums.  The band is so intense and powerful live – like an even more warped and damaged Melvins – this is the closest representation I’ve heard.  I scored a cassette version of it last year from Rotted Tooth Recordings, and I’m glad that it’s finally getting a wider release.

I’m currently working on mixing a couple albums by Chicago/Brooklyn band the Keepsies (a collection of amazing Beatles-esque jams that transcend idle worship into something insanely catchy and enjoyable) and Denton-based Wiccans (wild and wooly hardcore rooted in the Germs and Black Flag).  I’m really psyched on both, and can’t wait for people to hear them!

Thanks for checking out this stuff, and I hope you like some of it!  As always, feel free to get in touch, I’d love to chat – jonathan.schenke [at] gmail.com